Courage and cowardice can exist in the same person. I can attest to it. I alternate between a wimp and having a brave heart. I recognize a similar tendency in Thomas Cranmer (1489-1566), a leader in the Protestant Reformation. He orchestrated the...
It was Christmas Eve in the year 1886. A fourteen-year-old girl attended midnight Mass with her family in an enormous cathedral in France. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) was grieving her mother’s recent death and plagued with self-doubt. She wrote...
Lancelot Andrewes (1556-1626) was an academic prodigy from the start. He studied so hard that his parents had to force play on him. Okay, that wasn't my problem! The headmaster of his first school recognized his scholarly prowess and arranged a...
Imagine yourself sitting in a small gathering of Christians. The appointed leader asks the same questions of each participant. You know the questions beforehand since they are asked at every meeting. How will you answer when the questions are asked...
It is commonly called The Prayer of St. Francis. I hate to burst the bubble, but there is no record of the prayer anywhere in Francis’ writings. The earliest mention of the prayer associated with Francis is in a 1912 French periodical. The prayer...
He was a young professor sitting at his home office grading papers. One student inadvertently left a page blank in his bluebook exam. The professor described what happened next. "I wrote in it, 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.'" You...
It's not often that a prayer by a medieval bishop becomes the impetus for a pop song, but such is the case with a song from the musical Godspell. Who could have imagined that the catchy triplicate rhyme from the refrain of "Day by Day" sung by a...
You may recall the Socratic dictum, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” As much as we may agree with his sentiment, there’s something within us that resists personal scrutiny. Perhaps we’re afraid of what we might find. We’d rather deceive...
Social media advertises itself as increasing our connections with each other, yet studies tell a different story. People who spend more time online are actually lonelier. I get it. We need real-life friends, not only the virtual kind. Aelred of...
The struggle between old guard and new guard is nothing new. The old guard wants to preserve the past and maintain the status quo, while the new guard seeks alternative ways to usher in the future. Presbyterians in the early nineteenth century...
Katharina (Katie) von Bora was placed in a convent at the tender age of six. She took vows as a nun at sixteen but by her early twenty's, she wanted out. Reformation influences were already taking hold in her convent, and she was no longer...
The war drags on in the Ukraine. I struggle with how to pray for this prolonged conflict. Sure, I pray for peace, but the whole situation seems so immense and out of control. War is an indictment on us all. Gilbert Keith (G. K.) Chesterton...
Imagine what it would have been like to be taught in the faith by two of the original apostles, Peter and Paul. Clement of Rome (35-99) was a first century Christian who had the wonderful privilege of being a student of these first-generation...
Dating back to the second century, today's prayer originated with Irenaeus of Lyons (in modern-day France) (130-202). Irenaeus was introduced to Christ through Polycarp, who was said to have been taught by the Apostle John, forming a direct link...
She is known as the patron saint of beer. A leper colony supposedly ran out of beer and turned to Brigid of Kildare (452-524) for divine assistance. To be found without beer was nothing short of calamitous since the water was polluted and unsafe to...
What keeps you up at night? Caffeine? Crying babies? Barking dogs? Stress? Nervous fretting? Darkness has a way of compounding worry and intensifying temptation. Could we be contributing to our own demise here? We engage in excessive amounts...
The famous British abolitionist William Wilberforce arranged to take a vacation with his four sons in the early 1830's. William asked each of his four sons to bring along their favorite book to read aloud to the rest. All five of them brought the...
Nothing is wasted where God is concerned. God can use everything in our lives for redemptive purposes. Tikhon (Timothy) of Zadonsk (1724-1783) was born into extreme poverty in Russia. He spent his childhood in hard peasant labor in exchange for a...